Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/334

 264 SOUTH AND EAST AFRICA. also destroyed many places by sapping the artificial mounds on which they were built. In this way Nabiele, the ancient Barotse capital, has ceased to exist, or is represented only by a cluster of wretched hovels. Libonta, residence of the queens, visited by Livingstone, has also been dethroned, and Serpa Pinto, who passed close to its site, does not even mention it by name. In 1878. when this traveller traversed the Barotse valley, the royal residence had been shifted to Liatui, some 12 miles to the east of the river, and beyond the low-lying zone covered by the floods during the rainy season. Below the Nambwe cascades and rapids the new village of Sesheke (Kisseke, Shisheke), which succeeded to another Sesheke consumed by a conflagration in 1875, has in its turn become an imperial capital, or rather a trysting-place for the chiefs and their retainers. On the other hand, Linyanti, formerly metropolis of the Makololo kingdom, has lost all its importance. It is now nothing more than a group of huts standing on the north bank of the Chobe in the midst of a maze of marshy streams and backwaters. At the time of Livingstone's visit in 1853 Linyanti was the largest market town in the interior of South Africa north of Shoshong. At present the chief place in the Chobe Valley lies in the upper course of the river, and is known as Matambi/ane's, from the name of its chief. A part of the trade of Linyanti has passed to the village oiMpalera {Impalera, Mparira, Emhanm), which stands on a sandy island at the Zambese and Chobe confluence, above the Victoria Falls. In a neighbouring quagmire a copious thermal spring wells up, although covered by the periodical flood waters for three months in the year. Panda ma Tenka, a market lying in a thinly peopled district two days' journey south of the falls, serves as a sort of wayside station on the route from the Lim- popo to the Zambese, and is usually visited by the English traders from the south, by the Mambari, a half-caste Portuguese people, and by the European mission- aries. Here the Jesuits had founded a mission, which they have had recently to abandon. Matebelelam) and Inhabitants .of the Middle Zambese. The territories of three empires converge at the gorge into which the Zambese plunges over the Victoria Falls. To the north and north-west stretches the terri- tory of Barotseland ; southwards lies the Bamangwato domain, comprising the plains whi(!h are continued westwards in the direction of the Makarikari swampy saline wastes ; lastly, the kingdom of the Matebele (Ama-Ndebeli) nation occupies in the south-east the basins of the Gwai, Sanyati, Panyame, and Mozoe Rivers, the crj'stalline Matoppo Mountains whence these streams flow to the Zambese, and the whole of the opposite area of drainage southwards to the Limpopo. The Matebeles themselves, that is, the " Vanishing " or " Hidden " People, so named because concealed in battle behind their enormous oval bucklers, roam as masters over the whole land as far west as the shores of Lake Ngami, whence they procure their supplies of salt. Despite their present collective national name, the Matebeles were till recently